Teaching With Primary Sources on iPads

The National Archives Experience’s Docs Teach interactive tools center and is my favorite teaching tool from the National Archives. The free Docs Teach iPad app allows your students to access and complete a wide range of primary source-based U.S. History lessons. When your students open the app they have an option to browse for a lesson according to time frame and topic or they can enter a class code to complete an activity that you have created specifically for them.

To create a Docs Teach activity specifically for your students you will have to create an account on the website. Docs Teach offers seven free tools that teachers can use to create interactive learning activities based on primary source documents and images. The seven tools are Finding a Sequence, Focusing on Details, Making Connections, Mapping History, Seeing the Big Picture, Weighing the Evidence, and Interpreting Data. To get a sense of how each of these activities works you can view existing activities made and shared here by other teachers.